


The Happy Family

by Souja



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: Family Drama, In which there is a disconnect between parties, Shiota Family, and many babies are lost, is famdram a thing? idk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-20 00:50:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3630480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Souja/pseuds/Souja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They'd like to take this time to reflect on the years gone by.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Happy Family

**Chapter One** **: Regrets**

 

**\--**

_The Shiota's appear to be a very normal family._

**\--**

 

 

Otaru wonders when it got so bad. 

Nagisa sniffles lightly upstairs, and he curses his superior hearing. He can hear Hiromi chastising him in a sickly sweet voice.

 “ _Big girls don't cry, dear.”_ she sings, sweet and high and _painfully_ nostalgic. “ _Big. Girls. Don't. Cry.”_

He closes his eyes and tries to block it out, but it's hard to ignore the last few minutes of his wives latest tantrum let alone the last few years of their marriage. He's more surprised that he even tried; he'd expected the complacency to be second nature. He's unsure if he welcomes this new wave of defiance. it makes him wonder why it manifested so late. He shuts his eyes tighter till the dark begins to static and he tries to suppress the memories that creep on him like roaches on a festering bin. 

But when he opens them again and stares up through the sunroof and illusions of happiness at the crystal clear night, he regrets. He's automatically brought back to his child’s birth, to meeting her, and he steadies himself and braces for the journey. He's done this before; if the memories are a forest then this path is worn and weary, with thorns and thistles pricking up at his feet as he bleeds closer to the present. He knows the curves, each ragged edge. He knows by now the beginning of the tale. He recites it to himself like the kanji in his own name and hopes that maybe in doing so he can find the point at which the love of his life had turned away and had been replaced by the wretch at his sons bedside.

 

\--

 

He liked to think he'd met her one day in another lifetime. They'd clicked instantly, and there was something about the way she carried herself that intoxicated him faster than his fathers booze. She'd introduced herself as Shiota Hiromi-- _he still loved that name_ \-- and he introduced himself as her soul mate.

_Her giggle would ring in his ears for nights to come until it was replaced by imaginary wedding bells._

She was an older sibling-- _much older._ Her sister was a giggly babe by the name of Nagiko and Hiromi loved her like she was the sun and moon. The doting was endless and to the point it seemed _she_ was the mother and the child the fulrcum of her very universe. Nagiko was beautiful, an angel heaven snatched from earth all too early in the last term of their high school career.

She hadn't even said her first word.

He'd been stirred awake by the sound of pebbles on glass but had tossed over and ignored it. The big tree by his house was wont to tap when the weather turned sour, and he wasn't one to stay awake through a storm for any reason. But the tapping turned to knocking turned to outright pounding, and he turned in his fury to find his girlfriend bone-drenched and sobbing.

“Crib death” she'd explained through tears and hiccups as he drew figure eights and rattles and bows on the back of her jumper.

He'd held her, soothed her, dried the mascara stained tears. He'd fabricated promises from the breaths the girl wouldn't take. “She's just gone to prepare for _your_ baby girl.” He'd lied.

She'd smiled at him, but not the bright beam of brightness that it usually was. No, it was small and dark; a hidden secret that tugged at the edges of her lips and pulled them taught till her skin eked to join it.

The ornery thunder had rumbled nearby.

He'd known already that she was partial towards baby girls, but there was an almost possessed look about her when they went on their outings following. It wasn't normal the way she oo'd and aah'd at the little pink baby jumpsuits, at the plump Cabbage Patch Girl dolls, at the way she watched every little girl as they toddled through the mall.

He shivered, regretting ever finding it cute when she'd looked up at him and said, “I want a girl.”

 

\--

 

It'd worsened in college with Hiromi's first stillborn. A little girl, a Sunday child with more hair than they'd ever seen on a newborns head. She would've had her mothers eyes, he just knew it. They'd prepared in advance to hold her through the nights, to soothe her any way they needed to.

She was whisked away by a flurry of hands as soon as she'd entered the world, and Otaru had kissed his wife tenderly, wiping the sweat from her tired brow.

The Nurse returned with their baby swaddled and offered her sympathies.

Otaru remained by his wives side through the night holding her and their dead child. Hoping, aimlessly, that the sound of his heart might pacify her, might reach her through the infants cold body.

“You lied, Otaru.” was all Hiromi said. And then she continued to coo to the carcass in her hands.

 

\--

 

The following years were punctuated by new homes and finished degrees. They'd been on an airplane back to Tokyo when she'd smiled and shown him the picture of his twins. 

 

\--

 

They were a blessing in every sense of the word. Born to term a handsome boy and a beautiful girl with lovely blue hair.

Nagisa for the boy and Nagiko for the girl. Hiromi, exhausted, had cried as he penned in the names on their certificates. For a moment it'd seemed like they could be happy. Two angels were enough for heaven, they reasoned. 

But it wasn't in their favour--he wondered if it ever would be. Nagiko was small, frail. Nagisa had been much bigger, almost destined to survive. She'd fought for a week before finally departing with a wistful sigh as if retiring gracefully from an arduous struggle. Hiromi stayed by the incubator the entire time, clawing like a raven when Otaru finally said, “It's time to go home.”

The following weeks she alternated between fits of hysteria and protective coddling of the baby boy as she battled postnatal depression.  _Give them back_. He'd heard her plea one night as Nagisa slept under the mobile, _I'm sorry, 'Ko, just give them back._ The moon had sparkled like silver on her tears, and he wonders why he hadn't held her tighter. 

Otaru pretended it was normal when she called him “Nagiko.” He pretended that maybe, she'd gotten the names of their dead daughters and living son confused. After all, Nagisa and Nagiko were very similar; it was part of the reason they'd picked the names. 

He could've stopped her when the boy was 3 and still wearing the hand-me-down dresses that had once belong to _that_ late baby sister. He'd asked where she'd gotten it from—it was well over 10 years at this point-- but she'd smiled brightly and proceeded to dress their son in a bright pink polka dotted pinafore.

She claimed she was being inclusive (intrusive). That the boy really liked dresses---

 

\--

 

_Otaru stands to retrieve a drink from the kitchen, only to freeze at the sickly croons of “Na-gi-sa~”_

 

_He cringes, returning to his regrets and couch empty handed._

 

_\--_

 

 

\--When the boy was 6, he should've done something. He saw the way Nagisa's eyes hollowed at the sound of “clothes shopping”. He saw how the catalogue clothes were all feminine, all the perfect size for a sad, sad 6 year old boy.

In hindsight was not the right decision to dress up alongside him, but it had saved the boy the embarrassment of being Hiromi's only target. She _had_ always said he had hair like a doll, and he lied if he said he didn't like the way she looked at him in thigh-highs.

 

\--

 

At 7 Nagisa lost a second sister. They were sneaky this time; they named her Hana.

_They thought it would help, and maybe it had. But all the same they'd awoken to find the little angel cold and curled up in her bassinet._

“Why does she keep taking them, 'Taru?” Hiromi's wails had flooded the open field shortly before the funeral, “Why does she keep taking all my children?”

He'd stood by her, rubbing her back in sympathy, ignoring the burning sensation that raced through his lungs. 

Meanwhile, Nagisa played with the bows on his suit and kicked at the sand near his mothers suede shoes. He's still not entirely sure Nagisa knew what was happening when they lowered his sister into the ground and covered her in dirt. Looking back, it was then that he started to feel the numbness emanating from the boy.

When they returned home from a very distraught grandmother, Nagisa asked when “He was going to take the mud bath like Hana had.”

 

Hiromi had catapulted into another frenzy of cries, and Otaru discovered that the couch wasn't all that uncomfortable.

 

\--

 

At 8, he should have ran away. The marriage was starting to fray, he knew it. He loved her-- yes? _Probably?_ But there was something off about the possessive way she held their son, the way she barely acknowledged him as such.

 

Less as a son, barely as a human.

 

More as a doll that _happened_ to speak.

 

“ _You're gonna grow up to be just like mama, right? After all mama's done, it's the least you can do.”_

 

She'd returned from their bath scowling one day, with such a rage that her features warped like the demonic gates to a supernatural realm. “The doctor was right, I guess.” she'd spat, her voice coated in sugar and arsenic. Hiromi didn't explain, but he understood.

 

  _The doctor had said it would grow with age. It really wasn't something unexpected._  

 

Otaru change the birth certificate in secret. Every time Hiromi was present she tended to “accidentally” check the wrong box and the nurse, though patient and _very_ kind, was growing tired of supplying them with additional forms. He supposed a little bit of secrecy wouldn't hurt anyone.

 _What's the worst that could happen?_ He chided himself as he sent it off in a manilla envelope.

15 years of knowing her and never before had she shrieked so loud. Not when Nagiko had passed, not when Hana had left them. Certainly not when Nagisa had said "I don't like those bows, Mummy."

The walls had trembled, and to this day he swore no lightning nor thunder could match the destruction that ebbed in her voice.

He vowed that night to become a better liar. 

 

\--

 

But the days following that had gone relatively smoothly. So long as he avoided her bad side and pulled only on the line he was given, there were no arguments. Which was fine, he supposed. Complacency wasn't foreign anymore. He was soon reminded that such things are rarely so easy. 

 “I don't think our son would like that.” he mentioned one day as she thumbed a hot pink blouse. He kept his head angled away so as to avoid the glare from the witch who enchanted him daily. She smiled, and the impending chill of winter did nothing to help the frost he felt after their 'chat'.

 He stopped arguing after that; it _was_  her money after all.

The next morning he picked up a copy of a newspaper. "I need to be more productive," he'd said, ignoring the vacant stares they gave him.

He started work in the mines not a month later.  

**Author's Note:**

> *silent screaming noises*


End file.
